


Butterfly Bush

by Florentine



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23168386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florentine/pseuds/Florentine
Summary: Maybe the cracks over her eye can't be healed from the outside, so why not try mending the cracks from the inside?
Comments: 7
Kudos: 49





	Butterfly Bush

_Next time,_ Steven thought as he turned a flowery puzzle piece over and over to find where it fit, _we should do the puzzle with the zebra on it._

He still hadn’t told the Gems what Dr. Maheswaran had told him––all of that stuff about trauma and cracked bones and things that made his skin crawl to think about, damage hidden where he couldn’t reach it or fix it. They would worry. They would blame themselves, and he would have to pick up the pieces, he _knew_ he would, and then everything would go back to the way it had been except they would look at him like he was breakable and he didn’t _want_ that. The Gems didn’t have to see the fractures in his bones, and he didn’t have to see the hurt in their eyes. Everybody won!

What mattered right now was getting this puzzle, a 500-piece picture of a house in some countryside covered in a rainbow of flowers, completed. So he knelt on the floor with a little piece of colourful cardboard between his fingers that didn’t _fit_ with the other lavenders. Was there another patch of them? He’d have to look at the box.

A gloved hand slipped by him to place an edge piece in the skyline. It fit perfectly.

Being _alone_ right now wasn’t the best idea, he had gathered that much. Amethyst, though, was having too much fun with her Doing Whatever You Want 201 class (“these guys are, like, _advanced_ doing-what-you-wanters, gotta make a new section for ‘em”) for him to bother her, and Garnet had already seen him break down on the steps to the house. Pearl, though? Pearl, who had become practically tied to Volleyball for the last few weeks––and Volleyball herself, who seemed to need the company just as much as Steven did? They were the perfect candidates. They were quiet, respectful, and a little too wrapped up in each other to bother Steven too much.

_No, that’s rude, they’re not_ bothering _me. Come on. Get it together._

Volleyball herself had found it difficult to make friends outside the Pearls she had known on Homeworld––and the one sitting beside her, of course. When questioned about it, she laughed it off in that chirping, inoffensive voice of hers, saying it was _nothing for Steven to worry about, she just looked a little strange to them, that was all!_ , and he could believe that. How many other Gems had a crack across their face like that? Even previously corrupted ones were left with multicoloured spots and horns, not scars that dug deep enough to––

Hold on.

He dropped the puzzle piece he’d been holding and scooted until his back pressed against the couch like he’d just had an epiphany. One and a half pairs of eyes turned their attention from the puzzle to stare at him; a quiet bout of laughter they’d shared over a joke he hadn’t heard stopped. Pearl was the first to approach. “Steven-?”

Before she could get another word out, he stopped her with hands held in front of him. “It’s _inside!_ ” More confusion from the two of them, but the words made perfect sense to him. His mind just moved too fast to get all the words out at once!

His skull had been cracked, and he couldn’t reach that. Volley didn’t _have_ a skull, but she had cracks all the same, and _they_ started from the inside just like _his._ He couldn’t get inside his own skull, but he knew he could get inside her gem! He’d done it before––maybe not with Volleyball, but with Pearl, and if he could do it with her then why wouldn’t it work the same now? And maybe, if he could fix _her_ cracks, he’d figure out whatever secret trick could fix him, too. Then nobody except himself and Dr. M. and Connie would ever have to know there had been a problem at all.

All of that, though, would be a mess to explain, and he didn’t want to. So he took in a deep breath and started his train of thought back at a station where they’d be able to climb aboard. “Pearl, remember when I went inside theee––” (here, he had to stop to count on his fingers) “––pearl inside your pearl inside the pearl inside the pearl inside your pearl’s pearl?” Her expression of confusion shifted to a good-natured smile, and she nodded. His hand swung to point at Volleyball, who flinched back in surprise. “I could try that with you!”

To that, she looked apprehensively up at Pearl, like she was trying to gauge whether or not this was safe. One hand went to entwine itself with Pearl’s. A measure of comfort, if he had to guess. “Ummm…”

“No, no, just––it’s not weird! Think about it for a second! My spit didn’t heal your eye, because Nacre said it wasn’t an _outside_ problem, right?” A slow, hesitant nod. “Then that means it’s definitely _inside!_ And I’ve gone inside Pearl’s pearl, so I could probably definitely go inside _yours_ and see what’s going on, and maybe-!” Actually, if he thought about it, saying ‘I could spit inside your gem’ would take this conversation from weird to off-the-rails bonkers, so he cut that out of his little proposal. “There’s probably something in there I can fix! Maybe I can fix your eye if I go _inside!”_

For a minute, there was only the soft whisper of a thumb rubbing against the back of Volleyball’s hand. Clearly, this was something she had never heard of, and she didn’t quite know how to process it. “...You would go...inside?” she repeated, and her voice wasn’t quite _disgusted_ , but confused and not altogether happy.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Pearl muttered soothingly. “It’s like putting anything else into your gem. And you can say no.” That seemed to relax something inside of her, the option to say no. That, Steven had noticed, seemed to be one of the most liberating things any of the Pearls had experienced here on Earth. “He just wants to help.” To that, he nodded eagerly.

“...You really think it will help?” Again, Volleyball seemed to be asking _Pearl_ the questions, not Steven. It stung a little to think that she didn’t trust him. That, he shook off, chalking it up to how close the two of them were (and how distant he was from just about everybody else. _Don’t think about that)._

“I really do.”

Finally, Volleyball looked back to Steven, and her expression seemed to have relaxed some. “And you know what you’re doing?”

Nope! “Yep!” But confidence was key, and goodness knew she needed him to be confident if she was going to trust him with something as intimate as the very core of her being.

She mulled over it in her head for another minute, lips pursed and gaze downward, towards her own gem. He could see her lips move in a slow, practised mime of the word “no,” testing out how it might feel to say it aloud. A minute later, her gaze moved up to his earnest expression, and she relented with a breath she didn’t need. “All right. But-! Please don’t take anything out?”

“I won’t! I’ll leave everything right where I found it!” He stood from his spot, then (oops––he was still wearing pyjamas, was it rude to wear PJ’s into someone’s gem?), demeanour and body filled with a new sense of purpose. Maybe he couldn’t help himself, but he could definitely help someone else! And maybe––she didn’t notice that he noticed, he thought, but he _did_ notice––she would be able to walk past a mirror without flinching if he got this just right. Maybe she’d even be able to make some friends in Little Homeworld and she wouldn’t be relying only on Pearl for company.

Volleyball dropped Pearl’s hand and stood with him, her smile a little shaky, a little unsure, but true. “Thank you, Steven. ...You can leave any time if it’s upsetting. I won’t blame you.”

He had seen Pearl’s pearl. How much worse could this one be?

Steven set one hand over hers, meeting her eye with a concerned and determined sort of appreciation. “I won’t. We’re gonna fix this.”

Another unnecessary breath. Her smile steadied. “All right.”

And with a flash of light, he was in.

* * *

He had expected something like Pearl’s pearl: sterile, organised, and bright. What he got was nothing of the sort.

All around him was a lush garden, filled to the brim with colours and the sounds of hidden creatures making their own almost-otherworldly-but-still-very-Earth-y music, but out of focus. It looked more like a cloudy stained glass window than a garden he could touch. Still, he reached out to feel what he thought was a flower bush in front of him, and it felt like his hand was touching on invisible branches and objects he couldn’t name. If he squinted, he could almost make out familiar items––but those, too, stayed out of focus. Everything, in fact, was like that, save for a tiny oasis ahead of him where everything looked as sharp as real life. Inside that was Volleyball, her hair dotted with blossoms he couldn’t name, happily humming and combing through hanging vines that grew flowers and...seashells? Right, she had been collecting seashells along the beach and storing them in here, hadn’t she? Steven just hadn’t expected them to show up again growing out of a weeping willow.

As he stepped closer to her, everything came into sharper focus, like the reality of this dimension was dependent on her location. It probably _was;_ why keep up a world she wasn’t looking at? Finally, when he stepped in a spot where the grass below him could be separated into individual blades, she turned in surprise to face him. Her face quickly shifted from a tiny shock to an excitement that he’d never seen on her before. “Oh! Steven! Steven, I never thought I would see _you_ in here!” Her voice, too, was exactly like he knew it to be, but... _happier._ In here, she seemed so much more willing to express herself, and how could that do anything but bring a grin to his face? “Here-!” Volley grabbed onto his hands delicately, and with her, the focus of the world shifted––so he was right, it _did_ follow where she went. “Ohhh, I know _exactly_ where to put you, I made a spot ages ago! Let me show you!”

With that, she tugged him along through the garden, every step bringing something out of blurriness and thrusting something else into it. By his side, Steven saw a bush filled with...kitchenware, huh. They passed by a tree that grew a collection of fabrics, blankets that other Gems had given her in the last year. A vine that held just two sweaters. A strange type of flower whose petals were made of shopping bags. Was this how she organised everything? “Sooo...you like plants?” He spoke as casually as he could, given how intimate and bizarre this place was.

“I love them!” she chirped. “We used to have more of them on Homeworld, _oh,_ My Diamond––” (he could _hear_ the capital letters, it made him flinch) “––used to collect plants from all over the galaxy, and She never had anywhere to put them, they would end up in the halls, and the others were _so_ frustrated! Yellow always told me to clean up after Her, but why would I? I think it gave the palace character! And on _Earth,_ oh my _goodness, Steven,_ there are so many kinds of plants, I’ve never seen so many!” Had he ever heard her talk this much, or this excitedly, about _anything?_ He made a mental note to ask her more about plants when he left this place. Maybe she would come out of her shell more if he did.

_(Heh. Come out of her shell. ‘Cause Pearls come from shells. Remember that one for later, Bismuth will like that one.)_

If he thought about it, _really_ thought about it, it made an awful lot of sense. She’d made a garden behind the Temple, hadn’t she? It was a tiny thing with only a few flowers in it, but she seemed to love it, and Pearl helped her tend to it. The roses she’d planted were a particular source of pride for the two of them.

“Ta-daaa!”

She stopped in front of a hanging curtain of flowers and, expression bright enough to rival the sun, pulled it aside for Steven. Just beyond it was a tiny clearing, framed by flowers the exact shades of the shirts he had grown out of last year. Inside that...mementos. A selfie they had taken together. A few beach trinkets they had found together. A blanket he had given her. A few other things, piled together neatly, like she wanted to keep everything perfectly preserved. Had she been collecting this stuff the whole time? When he looked back at her, she looked more sheepish. “...Is this––is this okay? Is it weird? I just like this stuff. And, well, since you’re here, I thought you should-!”

“It isn’t weird,” he interrupted, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. She relaxed at that, gaze grateful. “But I can’t stay. I have some other stuff I have to do.” This place, after all, didn’t seem to be the source of any damage. If anything, it was the most well-adjusted and happy he’d ever seen her. “... _This_ is gonna be weird, but can I go into your gem?”

“Oh.” She dropped the curtain of flowers with a little breath of a disappointed noise. “My gem? Why?”

Right. He’d have to explain this over and over and over if he wanted to get anywhere. So, he spoke all in one breath: “I think if I go in your gem then I can find out what caused the crack and I can fix it but I can’t fix anything from here because it’s inside so can I please go inside?”

That seemed to spark something in her. Her hand flitted over the crack where her eye had been millennia ago, running over the lines like she was trying to smooth them. “...You think you can fix it?” He didn’t even get a chance to answer before she was nodding. Maybe the Volleyball on the outside didn’t want to show him just how much she hated the scars, but this one looked like she would do just about anything for him to get rid of them. “Okay. Okay. I’ll let you in. But be careful.”

“I w––”

Before he even finished, she had pulled him inside.

* * *

The moment his feet touched the ground, Steven had to cover his eyes.

Whatever memory this was, it was blindingly bright in a way that made his eyes water and his hair stand straight on end. The light _hurt._ It bore into his skin, deep into his bones, and left him feeling like something inside of him was being dried and shriveled up.

The noise hit next. It was _loud._ Loud, it was so loud, with voices overlapping and echoing and too loud to even tell one word from another. He recognised the voices...he thought he did, at least. Did he? He couldn’t _tell._

Was the room spinning?

He felt burning cold.

He felt like he was going to throw up.

He felt everything all at once.

“Welcome back.”

His own voice––smaller than it was now, higher––cut through the noise. Everything stopped then. The light receded, the floor stayed in one place…

And when he opened his eyes, he saw himself, standing in front of a kneeling Volleyball who looked both disoriented and sanctuaried. _Now_ he knew where he was. This was White Diamond’s chamber, wasn’t it? When he had bested her and freed the Gems under her control, Volley included. No wonder it had seemed so bright; she had told him, back on a quiet night when nobody else was around, that everything had seemed so _overwhelming_ to her in the days after she was freed. Her senses hadn’t been used in so long that even the tiniest bits of light had hurt. No wonder she remembered it like this.

Then, there was warmth. The world felt smaller, safer. Every bit of himself, from body to consciousness, felt protected and warmed and _loved._ It was as though a weight had been lifted that he didn’t even know he was carrying. When he looked at himself again, he was hugging Volleyball tight––right, he had done that, too. At the time, it had seemed so inconsequential. Had she really felt like this?

She was crying. He remembered that part, too.

It felt like hours that he sat there, watching a facsimile of himself soothe an overwhelmed and overstimulated Volleyball as she sobbed and clutched at him. The rest of the Gems in the room, the ones he _knew_ had been there, disappeared; the walls did, too. Slowly, a healing pink light he knew all too well encompassed the two of them and the two of them alone, holding both of them in a bubble of comfort. Steven knew that he was only feeling how she reacted to his own comfort, and it would definitely be strange to find comfort in it himself...but he did and he allowed himself to sink into the feeling of safety that the memory provided.

Finally, memory-Volley pulled away, and memory-Steven took her hands to help her to her feet. Her legs shook like a baby deer’s, unused to even touching the ground, let alone supporting her weight; she clung to him for stability and comfort she couldn’t provide herself. Memory-Steven offered her a smile that sent another wave of love over him.

_It’s going to be okay. Come on. We have a place for you._

The two of them started walking towards a door he couldn’t see, but could remember. After this, he knew, he had given Volley a space on the ship, where she sat in a daze for the entire journey to Earth and for a while after. The Crystal Gems had sat beside her, trying to coax her to speak up, but all she did was shake her head and curl in tighter on herself. ‘Later,’ Garnet finally said, and that had been enough for the others to step back. They would let her speak in her own time, maybe in a place where she felt safer, where the remaining three Diamonds weren’t present and looming over her.

This memory ended before that.

This memory ended with himself continuing towards the door and memory-Volley looking directly at him, tears still in her eye.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. They just embraced, and the last thing he heard before being drawn into her gem was a tiny, almost inaudible _Thank you._

* * *

The next layer was unlike anything he had seen in Pearl’s pearl and unlike anything he had ever expected.

Around him was a completely empty room. The walls, the floor, the ceiling were all the exact same shade of pink––the same shade as Volleyball’s gem. Inside the room was a harried-looking Volleyball, rushing around and grabbing at midair, sticking whatever she found there to the walls, and muttering something to herself. None of that caught Steven’s attention first, though.

What caught his attention were the ever-expanding cracks that opened into a darkness deeper than any he’d ever seen.

Her eye caught on him before he could move or speak. “Steven! No no no no––” She let out a yelp. Then, she grabbed at the air with two hands, dragging something in that same shade of pink out of the air and slamming it against a crack forming behind her. “You shouldn’t be here! No no go _home!_ ”

Boy, if he didn’t want to right now. But he had come this far, and if anywhere needed his help, it was here.

“What’s going on?” he asked––or tried to. Before the words came out entirely, a hole opened under his feet, the sound like breaking bones. Deep, deep inside the blackness, he heard something like a wail. Volley lunged forward to yank him out of the way, practically tossing him onto solid ground and leaving one flip-flop behind to tumble into infinity below him. Where the darkness had touched felt colder than anything he’d ever felt.

“Go _home!”_ she repeated. Again, she dragged at the air and used what she’d grabbed to cover the crack. Just as she did, another crack formed in the ceiling. “This place is _dangerous!_ Go home go home go home––”

How could he, though, when she so clearly needed his help? He just had to take a deep breath, shake the feeling of that coldness from his mind, and keep himself calm to keep _her_ calm. “Volleyball,” he said, voice as gentle as he could make it. “What’s going on? I’m here to help.”

Oh. She paused at that. For a moment, the cracks seemed to pause, too.

She resumed in full force a moment later, still dragging at the air. “I’m-! _Trying_ to fix my _gem!_ ”

“Why? How did it break?”

To that, she laughed, the sound dusty and exhausted. “You don’t know? You’ve never seen this before?”

...Did this happen to other Gems? He felt sick to his stomach thinking about it. “No. You have to tell me.”

“When a Pearl––” She paused to shriek as a crack grew twice its size. “Pearls are made in _layers_ and we have to have something to _sustain_ them. And when a Pearl doesn’t––make–– _memories––”_ Plugging up this hole sapped more of her energy than the previous ones. “––her gem _rots._ A-And then _I_ have to try and fix it because if I don’t then––then––” She faltered, hand in midair, fingers scraping at what looked like bits of dust. “––I don’t know! And I don’t _want_ to know! So I have to fix it, I _have_ to, I have to––”

Her gem was rotting from the inside out.

Nothing had sustained it for _eight thousand years._ He couldn’t even imagine what that was like, but he could see the effects: the world crumbled around him while she desperately tried to put herself back together. “What are y––”

“Calcium carbonate! It’s what I’m made of and I have to _fix this_ with _that_ or it won’t _work––”_

What she was made of. Then that was what she was pulling from the air: bits and pieces of her gem to repair her gem with.

She was ripping herself apart to fix herself.

Steven couldn’t keep watching. He rushed forward to grab her hands just as she was about to scrape more of herself away. “Wait! You don’t need to keep doing that! Look, that’s why I’m here––” In the state of panic he was in, he couldn’t think of a better way to show her what he meant than by pulling back to lick his palm and thrust it towards her face. “––This! It’s––”

“Healing.” For the first time in here, she sounded...not calm, but reverent. “Of course. Just like…” She didn’t need to finish the sentence for the both of them to know exactly who she was talking about. Her hands lowered; bits and pieces of dust fell to the ground, where they were reabsorbed into the gem. “...You can try.” By the tone of her voice, she didn’t think it would work. If it weren’t here that he could fix things, though, where else would it be?

So Steven threw himself to the ground, right beside the crack that had almost swallowed him whole, and smacked his hand onto the edge. (Where he touched the darkness, he almost felt _himself_ rot.)

The edge shuddered. It twisted up, trying to repair itself. With the sickening sound of a gem stretching not enough material to cover everything––a bit like sand falling through glass with the added sound of _strain_ ––it sucked itself in further and further until the hole was completely covered. Steven sighed, relieved; Volley didn’t look convinced. “I’m not sure-”

Just as quickly as it had repaired itself, the hole tore in half.

From the depths of the darkness below came a scream. It sounded familiar, somehow. Where had he heard it?

...Oh.

It perfectly matched the scream from the Volleyball behind him. The same Volleyball who was back to patching the area as quickly as she could. “I knew it! That won’t _work,_ it won’t, and I need to––I need to I need to I need to––”

As she muttered to herself in a familiar panic, Steven stared at the hole and where it had torn again. How was that _possible?_ He could fix a gem from the outside with his spit! Why couldn’t he fix it from inside?! One fist came up to pound against the side of his head, a hasty punishment for failure. Why wasn’t this _working?!_

Beneath him, the hole wailed once more.

“...Volleyball?” She seemed put off by the name in here, confused more than anything. Right. She wouldn’t know her own nickname in here. How could she, when it was so recent and _this_ part of her was buried? He tried again––“Pearl?”––and that seemed to set her as at ease as she could be. “What’s under here?”

She laughed again, incredulous. “Wh–why would you ever want to know what’s down there?”

Good question. When he looked down towards it, down to where he lost his flip-flop, he wanted to avoid it for the rest of his life. But how could he step away now when he was _surely_ just one layer away from fixing her? How much worse could the next layer down be? He was sure he’d seen worse. “I think...if I go down there––”  
“ _No!_ ” The word came out more as a scream than a coherent thought. He couldn’t blame her; he was starting to feel the same way. There was no way he would show it, though.

“But if I go down there-!”

“No!”

“I could–!”

“ _Don’t!_ ”

“But-!”

“You’ll hate her!” Out of everything––from the damage in her gem to the franticness she used to repair it–– _that_ sent this Volleyball into tears. Not that it stopped her from continuing her work; she just ripped and scratched at the air with tears streaming down her cheek. “Y-You’ll hate _me!_ ”

“...Hate you?” For what? What could she have possibly done for him to hate her? “I wouldn’t–”

“You will.” She hiccuped. The tears disappeared before they hit the ground. “You’ll hate me. You will.”

“But your gem!”

“It’s not worth it. You’ll hate me you’ll _hate_ me and I don’t––d-don’t––want to _lose_ you!” She shook her head as though to clear out the thoughts, but the tears kept streaming. “I’m not worth it. Please, I want to be your friend.”

His heart ached for her. Here she was––here she had been for longer than he cared to think about––trying to piece herself together, too terrified to accept help, too insecure to believe he cared for her, and hiding something she thought was too terrible for anyone to see. How long had she been bottling this up? Did Pearl know? Did _anyone?_

He peered over the edge. If there was an end to that darkness, he couldn’t see it.

...A deep breath.

“I’ll be back soon.”

With that, despite her shrieks, despite how she chased after him, Steven fell into the darkness below.

* * *

Whatever this place was, there was no end to it.

All around him was darkness so deep and inky he couldn’t see his hand when it touched his nose. His feet didn’t touch the floor, if there was even a floor to begin with; it felt more like he was suspended in tar. When he tried to breathe, his lungs filled with the same inky substance, and he _felt_ like he was choking but nothing was _wrong_ with him.

Jumping in here was a mistake. The feeling that _this was a mistake_ washed over him again and again as he searched fruitlessly for the crack he had jumped through. The darkness was just so _complete_ that even the bright pink-white of that room was invisible; when he swung his hands through the air to search for anything to grab on to, they snagged on nothing but moved like they were being held back. If he could just find _something,_ find the next layer down–– _was he going to be here forever?_ ––he would get out, he––

**GUILT.**

The feeling wasn’t unfamiliar. _This,_ though? This paralysed him. This was the most crushing, immobilising guilt he had ever felt, and it came from nowhere and dug into the core of his being. All he could do was double over and gasp “I’m _sorry_ ” as the feelings overwhelmed him. What was he even feeling guilty _for?_ Flashes of answers hit him (the eyes of a Gem he had never met, a shriek, something moving his arm for him), like fireworks exploding inside his skull, behind his eyes, he felt like he was going to _explode._ Under his hands, something crumbled, something sharp and pulsing with energy and he didn’t want to look down but he _did_ and it was––nothing? Of course. He couldn’t see a thing in here. But he could _swear_ he felt––

As quickly as it came, it went.

What was _that?_

Focus. _Focus,_ Universe. He was here on a mission, and he was going to finish it and get the hell out of this place as soon as he could. What could he see from here? Nothing, nothing, a whole lot of nothing as he turned around, nothing…

There. Far ahead of him, a tiny, curled up, familiar figure. _Volleyball._ Perfect! He could talk to her, she’d let him into the next layer, and then he could figure out a way out from here! All he had to do was swim towards her. That was it.

**GRIEF.**

Steven remembered all too well how it felt for his gem to be ripped out. This felt like that times ten. A scream shredded through his throat, the sound full of more grief than he could name or hold. It felt like everything in him, everything that made him _him,_ was being torn away all at once, and how could he (a hand the size of his torso reached for him desperately, stopped by distance, dragged a sob from him) hold himself together when his world was gone? He was an empty vessel fast-filling with all the pain of the world, more pain than he could handle, pain that made him feel like he would rather shatter right now than live with it for another minute, and…

Again. Gone.

Whatever was happening, he wanted it _over with._ Once he got his breath back, he pushed through the strange, tar-like air around him to reach Volleyball. ...And the closer he got, the less he wished he could see her.

She was curled into a tight ball, hands clutching at her buns hard enough for her fingers to shake and her hair to have come partially undone. Her entire form was shuddering; when he got closer, he could hear her sobs, interspersed with “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.” Worst of all––the part that made him sick to his stomach, that brought tears to his eyes––were the _strings._ Spiderweb-thin strands of something glowing brightly white wrapped around every part of her he could see: arms, legs, torso, _several_ around her neck, all pulled tightly enough for him to wince. On a human, they would have drawn blood, he was sure of it. There was a word for what she looked like, something kind of foreign that he couldn’t put his finger on.

One of the strings (whose end he couldn’t see, lost in the darkness all around her) tugged. Her head turned towards him sharply. He screamed.

The cracks he had become familiar with had _spread._ Not like they had in the Reef, small extensions of existing cracks; these had overtaken the entire left half of her face and neck and, _stars,_ down to her leg, leaving her looking like a porcelain doll that could be broken by a breath. That wasn’t the worst part. The _worst_ part was the way the strings moved... _through_ the cracks, _inside_ of her, holding her in place from the inside out.

_Marionette._ That was the word. Like one of those creepy puppets he once saw at a carnival. They’d unnerved him then, and she unnerved him n––

**CONTROL.**

Nothing in him felt like himself. His limbs were heavy, carried by someone, _something_ else, something he couldn’t see, and when he tried to yank himself free he couldn’t even gather the strength to move a finger. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. Like a presence had slipped itself into his body and dragged it along with its own whims. If he had to put a word to it, it would be _possession._ With no control over his body, he was forced to continue staring at Volleyball, the horrible mess of strings coming from every part of her.

Every bit of panic he felt was reflected in her face.

The feeling faded. He watched as it faded for her, too. He watched as her face crumpled up in practised anguish. “I’m sorry.” He’d become so _used_ to her tiny, chirruping voice that this one...this didn’t sound like her. This was dusty and broken, not _her._ Had she really sounded like this at one time?

...Did she feel all those awful feelings, _every day, all the time?_

She moved like she was going to apologise again. Steven didn’t give her the chance. He just took the last burst forward and wrapped his arms around her, strings and all, in the tightest hug he could manage. When he spoke, his own voice was choked with tears; he sounded like he had aged twenty years in the last hour. “It’s not your fault.” He felt a hiccup under his hug. Stars, what did he say to her? He couldn’t promise that this place would ever be repaired. There was nothing for him to heal––there was _nothing._ But how could he tell her that? How could he look her in the eye and tell her that she would probably be trapped in here for as long as Volleyball lived? He just couldn’t, not when she looked at him with tears still in her eye and anticipation in her expression.

“...You won’t be here forever.” Another hiccup. She burst into another bout of sobs, clinging to him like he was the only thing in the world. He felt like crying, too, but he had to stay strong. Just get through this part. She deserved that much. “White Diamond lets you go, and then you go to Earth, and you have a lot of friends.” Not that many, really, but more than she would ever have in here. Besides, why tell her the harder truths when she so desperately needed any sense of comfort? “And you love Earth. It’s got all kinds of plants! There’s a billion kinds of flowers, and you get to make a garden with them, and your friends help you. And you get to try all kinds of stuff you’ve never even seen before! You get to try _eating_ and you don’t _like_ it, but you like tea.” She wasn’t following, not really, but his words were doing _something_ to soothe her. The crying had quieted some. “You like blankets and sweaters, too. They’re really warm and soft and you put them over you and you collect them, and people give them to you because they want you to be happy. They _like_ you. They really do.”

He paused to let her digest that.

“...Um.” She sounded like she was going to cry again. “Does My Diamond…?”

_Oh, no._ How could he tell her about _that?_ He couldn’t leave her in here, stuck in the darkness, alone for who-knew-how-long, with the knowledge that Pink Diamond was never coming back. He just couldn’t.

...He swallowed his own revulsion. A moment of discomfort for him was nothing compared to an eternity of comfort for her.

One hand reached down to lift the hem of his shirt, revealing the gem that had caused the both of them so much trouble. His other reached for her hand, took it gently, and placed it over the gem. “She loves you _so much._ ”

And that was all it took. The world breathed a sigh of relief. The strings around her loosened; the cracks shrank. She fell back like she was sinking into a comfortable bed. Her face was just so _content,_ even past the tear streaks, as she allowed her eye to close and a tiny smile to finally break across her face. “...Thank you.”

That wouldn’t be enough to hold her together forever. They both knew it. For now, though, it was all he could give, and it was all she needed.

* * *

Steven wasn’t sure how he exited that terrible, empty place inside Volleyball’s gem. If she had expelled him, he didn’t remember. In fact, he didn’t remember leaving _at all._ The first thing he remembered after her smile was waking up to a concerned Pearl hovering over him and Volleyball quietly panicking a few feet away.

The crack was still there. He could see that much. ...When he looked closer, he could see how a few of the cracks had shrunk, and that was enough for him to let out a sigh of relief.

“Steven! How are you feeling? You’re burning up, do you feel sick?” A familiar hand––a _real_ one, this was the _real world_ ––pressed a cold cloth to his forehead, drawing a groan from his exhausted form. Pearl seemed relieved at the reaction: “Volley, he’s all right, I _promise_ he’ll be fine.”

“What if he isn’t?” That was the real Volleyball, the real sounds of her real worry, and it was a comfort to know that she was _here_ and _real_ and _safe._ After everything he had seen, he wanted nothing more than her safety.

“He is. I promise. Look, he’s waking up now.” The hand moved to wipe the cloth across his head. “You’re waking up, right, Steven?”

“...Mhm.” He felt like he’d been dragged through a warzone headfirst, but he was all right. He’d survive it.

The cloth moved away, replaced by the back of his surrogate mother’s hand. “You still feel hot…” Concerned blue eyes stared down at him; from across the room, an equally-frightened pink one watched him. “What _happened?_ Volleyball had to pull you out of her gem after you were gone for too long! You didn’t spend this long last time, what _happened?”_

There was no way he’d ever tell Volleyball’s secrets. Not a chance. Not even to Pearl. So he shook his head and forced himself to sit up. Maybe he hadn’t figured out how to heal her gem. He _definitely_ didn’t get any closer to healing his own broken bones. But…

“Hey, Volley. Wanna show me your garden?”

Maybe they could both use a little company.

**Author's Note:**

> This was honestly just an idea I've had in the back of my mind for ages! I really loved exploring it, and I hope y'all enjoy reading it. :)


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